Matteo Casilli/Indigo Film
MOVIE REVIEW
Another End (2024)
Reanimating the dead in movies – such as in “All of Us Strangers” – is mainly done in order to provide emotional closure, of a kind, for the living. This is always seen from the point of view from those left behind, who want something from the dead that they are willing to go to any lengths to receive, and which appears to be catnip for audiences with their own dead to bury. But as “Another End” lumbers on you’ll have plenty of time to reflect on what this means for those people brought back, the ones who cannot rest in peace. It’s hard to think of something more horrific than the idea that your loved ones might attempt to keep your soul alive for their own purposes even after you’re gone. No one is supposed to think this is a metaphor for artificial intelligence that only tells you want you want to hear. No, this is supposed to be romantic! Or normal! But not every human longing ought to be fulfilled; and not every movie with a sharp aesthetic and a superb international cast ought to be supported.
Continue reading “Back to Life” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Mammoth (2009)
Memfis Film/P.A. Jörgensen/IFC Films
“Mammoth," the English-language debut of Lukas Moodyson (“Lilya 4-Ever”) takes itself very, very seriously. Were the ponderous visuals, mannered atmosphere and overwrought soundtrack not enough evidence of that fact, the endless stream of scenes featuring actors dramatically expressing their characters’ inner turmoil confirms it. It’s one of those international compendiums with various storylines centered on the same weighty themes, which mean to say so much about the human condition and modernity that they end up saying perilously little.
Continue reading “It’s the Global Economy, Stupid” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Chevolution (2009)
Fortissimo Films
Everyone knows the image this film is about. Everyone might not know who he is or when or where the photo was taken, but he or she knows what the image means. It’s cool, edgy and rebellious. It’s got that little frisson that moves it beyond just another photograph to one of the most reproduced images of all time. It’s so famous that blind items can run in the gossip press about starlets getting their tattoos of it removed. In a London restaurant restroom, a mash-up of the image and the Mona Lisa hangs on the wall. And from its first appearance, it took very little time to morph into shorthand for — well, whatever you want it to mean.
Continue reading “A Warholian Mosaic of an Iconoclast” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Limits of Control (2009)
Teresa Isasi-Isasmendi/Focus Features
In “The Limits of Control,” Jim Jarmusch disappears so thoroughly into his elliptical style that he’s made an impossibly obtuse, arid film. It’s a vague abstraction of images, albeit ones framed with dreamlike, painterly gusto by rock-star DP Christopher Doyle. An exercise in gaudy self-indulgence, the film plods along through a series of cumbersome encounters, testing not the limits of control, but of patience.
Continue reading “Hit Man of La Mancha” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Sin Nombre (2009)
Eniac Martinez/Focus Features
Most filmmakers keep things on a small, personal scale when making their first feature. Such isn't the case for Cary Joji Fukunaga, the Oakland-born writer-director of “Sin Nombre.” He immersed himself in an unfamiliar culture, shot his film in a foreign language, and came away with a work of great raw power. An immigration drama in the grand tradition of movies like “El Norte,” the movie is alternately brutal and affecting, filled with big dreams and crushing realities.
Continue reading “Amores perros de hecho” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Blindness (2008)
Ken Woroner/Miramax Films
In an unidentified, multi-ethnic city, people start going blind. The first man is waiting at a red light when he finds he can no longer see. Another man (Don McKellar, who wrote the screenplay) offers to drive him home and then steals his car. When the first man's wife appears, she takes him to a doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who goes blind the next morning when he wakes up next to his wife (Julianne Moore). The other people in his waiting room (including Alice Braga and Danny Glover) are separately brought to a quarantine unit and held under armed guard. Eventually, everyone is blind, in the whole city and maybe the country. Everyone except Ms. Moore.
The author of the book on which "Blindness" is based, José Saramago, recently won the Nobel Prize for literature. The director of this film, Fernando Meirelles, was Oscar-nominated for his first international success, "City of God." The five main actors in this film are among the most garlanded and respected working in the industry today. And yet "Blindness" never takes off. This is because of a failure of imagination at the very source.
Continue reading “Impaired Post-Apocalyptic Vision” »